Brazilian national team coach Dunga made headlines when he left Ronaldinho out of his 23-man roster for the upcoming World Cup Qualifiers against Venezuela in San Cristobal and against Colombia in Rio in a little less than three weeks."(Ronaldinho) lacks training time with his new  team.  We hope that he will come back to being [. Click to continue reading...

Dunga could be seeing his days numbred as coach of the Brazilian national team. The road is not very easy for the Canarinha as they face an inspired Chilean side in Santiago, they wil then follow that up with a fairly accessible match against Bolivia at home. The result sounds accessible [...] Click to continue reading...

Over a year ago in a column for Soccer Times, I recall noting that the great players like Ronaldinho were starting to burn out due to a non-stop season of club, European, and international matches - not to mention the promotional tours that reduce any off time to recharge. In Ronnie's case, we watched him degrade over time until it reached a point where some said he had "fallen out of love with football. Click to continue reading...

The agent of Brazilian goalkeeper Diego Cavalieri has revealed that Liverpool have been given permission by Palmeiras to open talks with the player, with regard to a transfer to Anfield.

Juninho Parmigiani stated that the two clubs were set to agree the details for a deal involving the 26-year-old, who has been at Palestra Italia since the beginning of his career. Click to continue reading...

Lets see, we already have Kaka, Ronaldo, Pato, Emerson, and Dida, so while we're at it lets just add Ronaldinho too! A.C. Milan have become the unofficial club for the Brazilian national team now. Its pretty funny in one sense that one team could have so many top players from another country's national side, but it should make for some highly entertaining games at the San Siro. Click to continue reading...

Alex Tobin, Central Coast Mariners Development Manager is back from Brazil, Sao Paolo to be exact. Mariners Release below.

Tobin returns from eye opening São Paolo excursion

Central Coast Mariners Development Manager Alex Tobin has returned from a week-long stay with Mariners' sister club São Paolo in Brazil eager to further establish the yellow and navy's links with one of the true giants of world football. Click to continue reading...

Despite sitting at the top of the league, the New England Revolution have been mediocre at home this season. With potentially their largest crowd of the year at Gillette Stadium on Friday thanks to a doubleheader with the Brazilian National Team against Venezuela, the Revs will try to feed off the surge to change their fortunes against a struggling FC Dallas team.

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Sorry about the disappearance over the last couple of months. Lots of changes in my offline life, and not as much time as I'd have liked to keep the blog updated. I might have to change the style of the blog over the next while, with shorter entries and not that much info in regards to upcoming games, but at least I'll try to show up more regularly. Click to continue reading...

Dunga disliked the fact that Sao Paulo's playmaker Souza criticized in the press the practice of Dunga's preferring players who play in Europe to those who play at home. Souza himself was one of the candidates for the national team, but after those words Dunga in the worst soviet traditions virtually closed the door to country's main team for the talented player. Click to continue reading...

After a couple of losses to Mexico, Brazil finally restablished the normal state of affairs with a 3-1 win in a friendly match between the two teams in Boston on Wednesday. The last loss to the Mexicans had happened in June, when Brazil opened its campaign at the Copa America with a 2-0 defeat. The team would come back to win the title. Mexico had also won the previous matchup between the two countries, in 2005, also by a 2-0 score. Click to continue reading...

On the eve of two friendly matches against USA and Mexico Dunga made two replacements. Edu Dracena from Fenerbahce and Gladstone from Sporting replaced injured Alex (Chelsea) and Alex Silva (Sao Paulo). Click to continue reading...

Brazil beat Argelia 2-0 on Wednesday, on a friendly match played at Montpellier, France. The Brazilian National Team did not play well, but was competent enough to score two goals in the second half, when star players Ronaldinho Gaucho and Kaka joined the team from the bench. Ronaldinho took a free kick and Maicon headed the ball for the first goal. Click to continue reading...

Brazilian National coach Dunga announced the name of the 22 players for the friendly against Algeria, on August 22, in Montpellier, France. Kaka and Ronaldinho, who were not in last month's Copa America team, were included in the list. The coach had not been happy by both players' request to be left out of the team that played in the competition, ultimately won by Brazil. Click to continue reading...

According to an article on the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, the president of the Brazilian Footbal Confederation (CBF) admitted some of the players in the National squad were involved in heavy drinking during the 2006 World Cup, played in Germany. Mr. Ricardo Teixeira explained to the newspaper some of the reasons why he thought the team played so poorly during the competition. Click to continue reading...

For the duration of this year's Copa America, Brazil has been criticized at home and abroad for not playing up to par with what has generally been perceived as the traditional Brazilian way of playing football. The 'jogo bonito', or beautiful game, style of play made Brazilians famous, with a controlled pace given to the game so as to entertain fans, dominate the opposing team and ultimately - if it came to it - win titles. Click to continue reading...

It didn't take long to see that this was a different Brazilian team than the one that had played a mostly lacklustre competition. Brazil started the final against the powerful Argentines taking some chances in attack, and patiently controlling the ball in midfield. Before the game was five minutes old, Julio Baptista received the ball inside the penalty box on the left wing, quickly cutting it towards the centre of the pitch past an opponent, and then perfectly placing it to the left of goalkeeper Abbondazieri. Click to continue reading...

The Brazilian Under-20 team is finally out of the Fifa U-20 World Cup which is being played in Canada. The Brazilians, who barely qualified out of the first round with one win and two losses, lost to Spain 4-2 in extra time on Wednesday, in a second round game played in Burnaby, British Columbia.

It looked like the Brazilians would advance late in the first half, after Leandro and Alexandre Pato scored one minute apart, in the 39th and 40th minutes. Click to continue reading...

Uruguay captain Diego Lugano is used to being in the middle of a celebration by Brazilians on a football pitch. After all, he became famous in Brazil after being part of a good Sao Paulo team that won important titles like the 2005 Libertadores and Intercontinental Cups. On Tuesday, he was once again in the middle of a Brazilian football celebration. Click to continue reading...

Brazil and Uruguay play tonight for the Copa America semifinal, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The Brazilians are favourites, but not by a large margin - due mostly to the poor efforts the team has shown recently than any brilliance of the opponents in the last few matches.

True, both teams are coming from good victories in the quarterfinals (6-1 for Brazil against Chile and 4-1 for Uruguay over the hosts Venezuela). Click to continue reading...

If the U-20 team just managed to scrape by to the second round in their World Cup, the main squad had an easier time moving to the semifinals. After a controversial midweek when several players were accused of celebrating the qualification to the second round through excessive partying, Chile faced Brazil missing a few key players. Unluckily for the Chileans, the Brazilian team also chose to play its best game of the tournament so far. Click to continue reading...